Another Opening, Another Show: August 2024

A lot going on, even as we gear up for next month's start of the autumn season. . . .

Theatrical

ACT's Young Conservatory is putting on Carrie: The Musical, which, in true Broadway Big Flop style, is now a cult classic (music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, book by Lawrence D Cohen); this revival is directed by Becky Potter & you can see it at the Strand Theater from 1 to 11 August.

The Marsh presents the In Front of Your Eyes Performance Festival, featuring works by women & non-binary people, at both their San Francisco & Berkeley stages; the festival runs from 1 to 25 August, & you can check out the full schedule here.

Golden Thread Productions presents the New Threads Reading Series: on 2 August you can experience Where can I find someone like you, Ali? by Raeda Taha, directed by Hala Baki, & on 9 August The Return by Hanna Eady & Edward Mast, directed by Hanna Eady; both shows are at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco & admission is free but you must register at their website.

BroadwaySF presents Thank You For Listening: An Evening of Songs and Stories with NPR Host / Pink Martini singer Ari Shapiro at the Curran Theater on 8 August.

PlayGround presents its third annual Free-Play Festival at the Potrero Stage from 9 to 25 August, featuring 11 different shows from a wide range of creators on a wide range of topics; you can get some specifics here.

BroadwaySF presents Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Concert at Davies Symphony Hall on 16 - 17 August.

42nd Street Moon presents Laurie Roldan Sings a Song for You: A Cabaret Concert Inspired by the Music of Karen Carpenter, written. directed, & performed by Laurie Roldan, at the Gateway Theater on 17 & 25 August.

The Shotgun Players Champagne Staged Reading Series presents Pluck, written by Jan Rosenberg & directed by Molly Van Der Molen, a "play about gender identity, dysphoria, twins, and monsters in the age of AOL", on 19 - 20 August.

BroadwaySF brings back the ever-popular Oz fan fic musical Wicked at the Orpheum Theater from 28 August through 13 October.

Operatic

The West Edge Opera Festival takes place this month, with three works, all staged at the gorgeous Scottish Rite Center on the beautiful shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland: there's the world premiere of Bulrusher, with music by Nathaniel Stookey to a libretto by Eisa Davis based on her original play, conducted by Emily Senturia, directed by NJ Agwuna, & starring soprano Shawnette Sulker, & that plays on 3, 11, & 15 August; Jacqueline, about cellist Jacqueline du Pré, with music by Luna Pearl Woolf to a libretto by Royce Vavrek, directed by Michael Hidetoshi Mori & starring soprano Marnie Breckenridge & cellist Matt Haimovitz, & that plays 10, 16, & 18 August; & The Legend of the Ring, David Seaman's one-show reduction of Wagner's Ring cycle, conducted by Jonathan Khuner, staged by Sam Helfrich, & starring Philip Skinner as Wotan, Tracy Cox as Brunnhilde, & Alex Boyer as Siegmund & Siegfried, & that plays 4, 9,  & 17 August. & though we're told the show is a West Edge favorite & back by popular demand, & friends of mine are anticipating it eagerly, I will freely admit that I just don't really get it, & if you want a more detailed explication of my feelings on the subject, go here to see my entry on the 2010 production.

The Merola Opera Program presents Don Giovanni, conducted by Stefano Sarzani & directed by Patricia Racette, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on 1 & 3 August; for tickets call the box office at 415-864-3330 (no idea why you can't buy tickets on line, but in previous years Merola hasn't allowed buyers to choose their own seats, so you're probably better off calling anyway).

The Merola Opera Program Grand Finale will take place at the Opera House on 17 August.

The Lamplighters present the ever-popular Pirates of Penzance, with musical direction by Brett Strader & stage direction by Michael Mohammed, on 3 - 4 August at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 10 - 11 August at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, & 17 - 18 August at YBCA in San Francisco.

Choral

The Oakland Symphony is holding a Summer Sing-In series, in which community members are invited to join the orchestra & chorus at the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland to sing along in some favorite works of the orchestra + chorus repertory: on 31 July, Ash Walker leads Ralph Vaughan Williams's Dona Nobis Pacem & Fauré's Requiem; on 7 August Buddy James leads the Mozart Requiem & Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna; & on 14 August incoming Music Director Kendrick Armstrong leads Orff's Carmina Burana.

Vocalists

The Transgender District & Opera Parallèle present the third annual edition of Expansive - A Showcase of Transgender & Non-Binary Classical Artists, featuring baritone Lucas Bouk, bass-baritone Wilford Kelly, & violinist Queen Angelina, with Afrika America once again hosting, along with Taylor Chan on piano, & that's 8 - 9 August at the Strand Theater.

Chamber Music

Duo Penseur (violinist Chantel Charis & pianist Alex Fang) perform Minding the Gap, a program featuring works by Jessie Montgomery, Beethoven, Clara Schumann, & William Grant Still, at Old First Concerts on 2 August.

Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in downtown San Francisco has the following programs this month: on 13 August, cellist Evan Kahn & pianist Amy Zanrosso will perform Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano #4 in C Major, Opus 102, # 1, Britten's Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, Opus 65, & Glazunov's Mélodie, Opus 20, # 1; on 20 August, cellist Angela Lee & pianist Elizabeth Schumann will perform Frank Bridge's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor & Chopin;'s Cello Sonata, Opus 65; & on 27 August, in a co-presentation with the San Francisco International Piano Festival, violinist Ariel Pawlik-Zwiebel & pianist Markus Pawlik will perform a movement of Schubert's Violin Sonata #2 in A minor, Fauré's Nocturne in B Major Opus 33 #2 & his Barcarolle in F-Sharp Opus 66, Ravel's Tzigane, & César Franck's Violin Sonata  in A Major.

The Zēlos Saxophone Quartet (Jonah Cabral, soprano sax; Johnny Selmer, alto sax; Alessia Garcia, tenor sax; & Barry Galbreath, baritone sax) will perform works by Bach,Jean Baptiste Singelee, Astor Piazzolla, Carly Florio, Eugene Bozza, & Philip Glass at Old First Concerts on 16 August.

The Eos Ensemble (Craig Reiss, violinist; Evan Kahn, cellist; Elizabeth Dorman, piano), will play piano trios by Haydn & Dvořák at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland on 18 August.

Instrumental

The 7th Annual San Francisco International Piano Festival unfolds from 23 August to 1 September, with a particular emphasis this year on the works of Gabriel Fauré; check here for a full list of events.

Modern / Contemporary Music

Motoko Honda’s Simple Excesses Quartet, self-described as Uncharted Sonic Adventures: Jazz, Chamber, Avant-garde, and Beyond (Motoko Honda, composition & piano; Cory Wright, woodwinds; Matt Small, bass; & Jordan Glenn, drums) will perform a concert of compositions & arrangements, most of them new, by Honda on 17 August at Old First Concerts.

Jazz

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, with special guest Irma Thomas, will play at the SF Jazz Center from 15 to 18 August.

Dance

The State of Play Festival, featuring new & in-progress works by local & national dance creators, takes place at the ODC Theater from 1 to 4 August; check out the full schedule here.

A new dance company, Eight/Moves, will inaugurate its first season at Z Space on 16 - 18 August, featuring world premiere dances by Rena Butler, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, KT Nelson, & Founder and Artistic Director Mia J Chong.

FACT/SF presents SF Summer Dance Festival at the ODC Theater with two programs, the first on 16 - 18 August & the second on 23 - 25 August.

World Arts West Dance Festival, which will spread over three weekends, opens on 25 August (the other two weekends are in September) at the Dance Mission Theater, with a series of panels & programs exploring Queer Identity, Dance as Resistance, & traditional Indian dance.

Art Means Painting

The Cartoon Art Museum hosts Gorey Elephants on Parade, featuring art prints created by Edward Gorey featuring elephants, from 5 August through 15 December.

Two new shows are opening, both on 10 August, at the de Young: About Place: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift runs through 28 September 2025 & Robert Bechtle: Prints and Drawings, exploring the work of the Bay Area photorealist, will run through 5 January 2025.

To Exalt the Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection opens at BAM/PFA on 14 August & runs through 6 July 2025; the exhibit "draws from BAMPFA’s art and film collections to explore how museums collect, care for, and amplify the work of artists who celebrate ideas of impermanence and cycles of decay and regeneration."

Cinematic

The Roxie in San Francisco has a mini-celebration of The Archers: Powell & Pressburger this month, featuring the documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, in which Martin Scorsese discusses his cinematic passion for the two, as well as showings of The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death, & I Know Where I'm Going! (I hated that one so much I am tempted to watch it again).

Blade Runner, the [allegedly] Final Cut, will be shown at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco on 2 August.

A couple of classic German silent films are coming to the Balboa Theater this month: Fritz Lang's Metropolis on 4 August & The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, with live accompaniment by Sleepbomb, on 9 August.

On 3 August, City Arts & Lectures presents Jon M Chu, director of In the Heights & Crazy Rich Asians, in conversation with Awkwafina about his new memoir, Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen.

The San Francisco Symphony will show La La Land with live orchestral accompaniment, conducted by the score's composer, Justin Hurwitz, on 3 - 4 August. La La Land gained some extra notoriety a few years ago when it was initially but erroneously announced as Best Picture at that year's Oscar ceremony; after some confusion, the actual best winner, Moonlight, was announced, & the show came to an abrupt & awkward conclusion. Afterwards there were some "think" pieces claiming that La La Land, a musical about jazz & Hollywood show business during the mid-twentieth century, represented the Past & Moonlight, an artfully shot & beautifully performed film centering Black & queer experiences, represented the Future. I'm not so sure things divide that easily (spoilers ahead, as I will be talking about the films' endings). In the last part of Moonlight, the protagonist goes to a new city where he re-unites with the man he had a brief sexual encounter with in high school. This man is still good looking, employed in an "interesting" job (he's a cook), available, & still interested in the protagonist. Re-uniting with your high school crush who is still attractive &, though clearly a good catch, still available, as if waiting for you? This is an ending straight out of the Hallmark playbook (I say this as someone who has seen an embarrassing number of Hallmark Christmas movies – a friend & I would watch them during the lockdown, that's my excuse). The ending of La La Land, on the other hand, in which our two leads meet again but do not end up together, though lifted from Umbrellas of Cherbourg, is actually a more realistic & emotionally tougher ending. I think the artiness of Moonlight & the (let me add, welcome) emphasis on Black & queer experiences disguised for many viewers how similar the ending is to a conventional romance.

A new restoration of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai will play at the Roxie in San Francisco from 9 to 14 August.

On 11 August at the Roxie in San Francisco, there will be two showings of Dancing with the Dead: Red Pine & the Art of Translation, in which director Ward Serrill tells us about Red Pine, the celebrated translator of ancient Chinese poetry; Serrill & Red Pine are scheduled to attend in person, & the performance includes a Director Q&A, a conversation with Red Pine moderated by May-lee Chai, & a musical performance by Spring Cheng; a book signing will follow.

BAM/PFA will present The Films of Lynne Ramsay from 22 to 25 August.

On 30 August, as part of the San Francisco International Piano Festival, Old First Concerts will host pianist Stephen Prutsman with the Telegraph String Quartet (Eric Chin & Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) in Schumann's Piano Quintet Opus 44 followed by Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr, in my view possibly the best of Keaton's films, with Prutsman & the Quartet performing the pianist's original score.

Friday Photo 2024/30

 

an artichoke, going to seed

Poem of the Week 2024/30

Water

If I were called in

To construct a religion

I should make use of water.

Going to church

Would entail a fording

To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ

Images of sousing,

A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water

Where any-angled light

Would congregate endlessly.

– Philip Larkin

You could probably create a whole Agnostic Anthology of twentieth-century poetry based on the receding (some would say loss) of organized religion as a guiding, unifying social principle. Though organized religion continues to influence or control much in the modern world, for large segments of the population, it is irrelevant, or one factor among many, or seen negatively, & in any case if you decide your religion is oppressive or unhelpful in some way, you can easily find another. There were always alternatives, but with them often came social strictures & social consequences that no longer apply. There is no longer the sense that someone who doesn't go to church regularly is a bad person or a bad citizen; the indifferent average person who trudged to church dutifully mostly no longer feels the need to keep up the act. The theological disputes that tore countries apart in earlier centuries are now smoothly elided, even by church-goers, who mostly want some sense of ritual & community. It's that loss of centuries-old ritual & (alleged) community that lingers in the twentieth-century mind, for some as a sort of golden past in which there was a common understanding of life & its meaning, for others as . . . maybe just a sense that something that used to be so important is now a semi-forgotten relic, something for the tourist trade, like the old churches dotting the English countryside that Larkin grew up in. (You do have to wonder how true that sense of universal guidance & community ever was; people do tend to think the past was simpler than the present, & the people back then maybe less sharp than we are.)

You can sense this nostalgia in this poem, in which the poet receives the unlikely task of constructing a new religion (the old ones just don't cut it anymore. it seems). But there's a bit of tart comedy underlying the whole concept; who is calling him in? This apparently isn't a desire he felt on his own. When he imagines the situation, he imagines someone (or some organization) calling him in, as if he were a lower-level employee receiving a big project at work. And anyway why are they asking him to create a new religion from scratch? Some sort of social need, we can guess.

That brings us to a genuine social need, water. As with many actual religions, the poet's construction begins with one of the essential elements: water. Living in a frequently drought-stricken state, as I do, you become very conscious of the power of water, &, yes, its sacredness, though as with many holy things you see it wasted & despoiled foolishly. Water is often taken for granted, not given the respect it deserves as one of existence's requirements. The speaker here sees its importance; in describing how he would construct a religion, he tells us he should make us of water; should not only indicates an action one will take in the future (this is mostly a British usage, I think) but also something that one ought, really ought, to do. This first stanza is a single sentence, building up to that one word: water; the rest of the poem flows from that one word in a single continuous sentence, climaxing with the final word, endlessly..

The two middle stanzas give us some details about the new religion; interestingly, no mention is made of any theological underpinning, or any Creator, or any sense that there is something significant beyond or behind or in the water. There is no mention of drinking the water (imperative for the continuation of life, of course) or washing anything (clothes, dishes, oneself) in it. Instead we are given views of the social / community & ritual aspects of religion. Fording a stream & changing your clothes to dry ones: this is not the same thing as bathing oneself or washing one's clothes, of course. But it echoes Biblical injunctions to put on the new self (see for example Ephesians 4:24), & donning new robes or new outfits is a long-time way of announcing a change of status (which may be why Thoreau cautions us against enterprises that require new clothes).

Then we have the Images of sousing, / A furious devout drench, which echoes the cleansing, re-birthing experience of baptism (particularly of the total immersion variety). But we only have images of the soaking in the liturgy, much as traditional religions invoke blood & sacrifice but serve you wine in its place; rituals can only go so far before what is memorable turns into what is too inconvenient to maintain. Again, there is an undercurrent of slight mockery: souse means not only to soak or drench, but is also a slang term for a drunkard; yoking furious & devout conjures up the intense, often destructive, energies that organized religion often unleashes (along with the suggestion of total immersion baptism, this makes me think of downmarket Pentecostalist sects).

But the mockery disappears in the final stanza, whose beauty is striking after the slightly silly images of people fording streams & changing clothes & being drenched furiously. The earlier stanzas are limited to three lines, but this final one breaks out into four. Should makes another appearance, again underlining not only future action but that this is an almost obligatory action. I should raise in the east: again, there are echoes of older religions, particularly Christianity; raise may bring to mind the Resurrection, or the raising of Lazarus, or the raising of the dead during the Last Judgment.. The east is the direction in which the sun rises, & is therefore a traditional symbol of rebirth & new beginnings. What does he raise in the east? That simple but necessary thing in life, a glass of water.

Clear glass, presumably, so the sun rising in the east can hit it & refract in shimmering prisms, the way light so gloriously does. Light of course is also a traditional symbol of the Divine, & of knowledge (see the opening of Book 3 of Paradise Lost: "Hail holy light, offspring of Heav'n first-born, / Or of th'Eternal Coeternal beam / May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light . . . "). And in the water the light will congregate endlessly; congregate not only means to come together or gather but brings to mind the congregations that used to fill the now mostly emptied English churches. Only this time the congregants are not people, but rays of light, light transfigured by the water, & unlike the human congregants, who drift away or die, the light will gather endlessly: a poignant image of humanity lightened into beauty, given an eternal, endless life that the poet can no longer pretend to believe in but still, apparently, longs for.

I took this poem from the Collected Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Anthony Thwaite.

Museum Monday 2024/30

 

detail of The Annunciation by the Master of the Retable of the Reyes Católicos, at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

Friday Photo 2024/29

 

a fountain on Boston Common: a sunny day in June 2019

Poem of the Week 2024/29

Salt and Vinegar

I consumed the salt and vinegar crisps

in a single gulp.

The packet ballooned with volume

to greet me; a twin

of my stomach, but darker –

when I finished

it wasn't as empty as my stomach once had been,

my hand stretched further into it

like a glove

and came up with shards, jagged

in the depths, the world's splintered residue.

– Amit Chaudhuri

Crisps are the very descriptive British term for potato chips. Salt & vinegar is a flavor inspired by the traditional malt vinegar used on the chips (French fries) in fish & chips (so many differing potato words!). I've had salt & vinegar crisps. They're actually kind of disgusting, with a highly processed, very salty, & somewhat acrid taste. But I can understand the craving for them, for this specialized artificial bloom of flavor, this attempted recreation of a homey comfort. Perhaps that is why the hungry poet consumed rather than ate them: they are very much a consumer product, as opposed to "food" in the sense of, say, an apple or pear. And if you like, you could read this poem not only as a description of a common experience – feeling very hungry, grabbing some junk food that will fill but not quite satisfy you – but also as a darkly humorous critique of how a capitalist society packages our needs in a way that leaves us needing more.

The poet is describing a familiar sight here: the bag, inflated like a balloon, that ends up holding many fewer potato chips than you think, or than you think you need. It's sort of a great bladder, filled with air, that deflates easily. He compares it to his stomach, also a sort of bag filled with items resembling food. One twin (the stomach) fills as the other (the bag) empties. The two are linked, the man's innards & the bag's crisps. Why is the bag the darker twin? Is it because his stomach can become full, & even too full, & the bag never has quite enough? Is it because a stomach can feel contented but the bag of crisps is calculated never quite to satisfy? He's eaten all the potato chips, but he still wants more. His hand goes further & further into the bag – like a glove, he says. First the bag is like his stomach, now it's like a hand covering. His snack keeps metamorphosing into bodily parts or body coverings. It's a bit eerie, a touch surreal.

Another familiar sight is the little bits of potato chip clinging to the inside of the bag, despite your best efforts to hoover up all available contents. It's a minor thing, of course, but acquires significance in  the poem: all the poet can come up with are bits that he describes in words conveying brokenness, a dangerous sharpness, rejected leftovers, something destroyed, broken, fragmented: shards, jagged / in the depths, the world's splintered residue. It's a  bit comic to describe little bits of flavored greasy potato chips clinging inside a bag in such evocative terms. But it replicates what most of us feel when we're eating a snack & it's run out before we want it to: it's not really a big deal, the people gulping down crisps are mostly not people facing serious hunger, we know we should be eating something healthier but we gave in to a craving: but it's still annoying in a way that seems, in the moment, important. And we can recognize the comedy in our reaction & still feel it as a reflection of our general disappointment in life. There's an underlying critique here, as I mentioned, of a consumer capitalism that comes close to satisfying our desires while still leaving us craving more. (I think it's not a coincidence that the crisps are in a tart flavor that is a chemical re-creation of a traditional dish; is this an attempt to sell us some profitable evocation of a national nostalgia?.) But beyond that, the poem is a weirdly comic & even unsettling look at the way our deeper hungers are never quite satisfied by the world.

I took this poem from Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems, 1985 - 2023 by Amit Chaudhuri.

Museum Monday 2024/29

 

Duchamp's Fountain, Matisse's Femme au Chapeau, & Diego Rivera's The Flower Carrier, lined up at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Friday Photo 2024/28

 

early morning, tomato plants, July

Poem of the Week 2024/28

Return

After a few centuries

we prodigals came home in August.

London lowered her skies.

The fatted calf withdrew

into sullen pasties.

People in pubs backed off.

We had lived among swine.

Only the small country churches

opened their dim doors to us

like ancient aunts.

Half blind, they mistook us

for their lost congregations.

– Virginia Hamilton Adair

Adair was an American poet, but whatever autobiographical incidents crystallized into this poem about a return to London don't really matter to us, its readers, & probably didn't matter much to her, either, as the very first line, with its capacious time frame of centuries, lets us know that this is not a literal travelogue.

There's a comic slant to the juxtaposition of the grand centuries with the very specific month of August. Why that month? It's a standard time for vacations, though this trip, with its centuries & the Biblical weight of prodigals, doesn't seem like an ordinary vacation. August is full-on summer, & your feelings about that time of year will vary depending on how you feel about heat, humidity, sweat, & flies. Despite the heat, it's the month that starts to signal the approach of autumn & then winter, a standard poetic trope for old age & death: grasses dying out, a breeze that's cooler than expected, brown leaves starting to fall on the sidewalks & roads more frequently; darkness is starting to fall a littler earlier each day. It's the month of things getting late, of the end approaching.

Prodigals in the second line is likely to put the reader in mind the strange parable of the Prodigal Son (found in Saint Luke, 15: 11 - 32), in which, to give it a slightly nonstandard (but I suspect common) reading, the dutiful younger son is taken for granted while the older, the Prodigal, goes out into the world, burns up the money he cajoled out of his father by living the high life, & then returns, repentant through poverty, to that father, who celebrates his return by fêting him with a fattened calf. The dutiful among us are going to find this deeply unfair & even troubling. Meanwhile, there's glamor & excitement to the Prodigal's life, even in his misery: he's burning the candle of his inheritance at both ends & winds up in a picturesque plight as a herder of that unclean animal, the swine: this isn't a grinding, scrimping poverty, a careful making-do-with; it's as romantic in its way as his wild parties.

What makes the poet prodigal? We never quite find out, nor do we find out who accompanies her (it's we who come back). Since she is an American, there is a suggestion that England is in some way, if only language, the "Mother Country"; anyone who writes poetry in the English language, even those with no genetic link to the island, is bound to see the language-source as, in some sense, a home. Is it simply her Americanness that makes the poet a prodigal, her country's separation from its original colonizers, the assumed wealth & carelessness of her country, or maybe just a feeling that one has strayed, done wrong carelessly with & in one's life, & needs to return to one's source?

London's greeting is not quite that of the father in the Biblical parable: the skies (the heavens, if you will), are lowered. Literal storm clouds? A more metaphorical reluctance in the greeting for the returned ones? The mention of the fatted calf confirms for the reader that the switch flipped by prodigal was correct: the poem is playing off the parable. But the effect, starting with the verb lowered in the first line of the stanza, is clearly going to be more subdued, less dramatically colored than the Biblical story. There is no Father here, rejoicing in his son's return; instead, rather than being slaughtered to feast the returned Prodigal, the Fatted Calf withdraws itself on its own volition, & fills its assigned role duly & dully in the form of sullen (dark, glum, moody, morose; anything but welcoming) pasties. A pasty is a traditional British meat pie, the sort of "heritage food" you would order while visiting a foreign place, in order to convince yourself you were having an "authentic" experience. The locals know this, & produce them for the tourist trade. This may be part of the sullenness; there's no indication that the pub pasties are tasty. And contrary to the stereotype of the welcoming pub crowd, here the returned Prodigals are given the cold shoulder – even more than that, they are actively avoided. They are tainted rather than made romantic by their degrading time among the unclean pigs. They are back,  but still outsiders, perpetually. The contrast with the parable underlines that this is a world without the guiding if perhaps puzzling & paradoxical ancestral faith that led the Father in the parable to welcome back his erring son.

In the final stanza, the poet has moved from one standard tourist attraction, London & its pubs, to another, the old churches dotting the countryside. And here the prodigals are welcomed, though not quite with full comprehension: the churches are small, their entrances are dim, they are like older relatives who, half-blind, can't quite remember who you are: yet they let you in anyway, giving some sort of welcome, at least more of one than the prodigals received in the grander venues of the capital. Again there is a sense that the past's faith-based ways & assumptions have mostly vanished, just like the congregations the churches have lost (has the faith died out? is it just that customs have changed, & regular church-going is no longer the signifier of respectability? have the churches, content in their old ways, failed to react wisely to the modern world?).

Is the title of this poem a noun, indicating the fact of a trip back to some sort of originating place, or is it a verb, an injunction urging us to go back to such a place? The Prodigal was certainly in a bad place when he decided to return, & we can assume that the poet, a self-proclaimed Prodigal, is also in some sort of place of need (perhaps emotional more than physical). In a modern world devoid of its long-time religious & related social customs, & in an ambiguous, disappointed way typical of adult life, the returned prodigal finally finds welcome, of a sort. It may not be enough, but it's what she gets.

I took this poem from Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems by Virginia Hamilton Adair.

Museum Monday 2024/28

 

detail of Saint Sebastian, an etching by Odoardo Fialetti after Tintoretto, seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC as part of Venetian Prints in the Time of Tintoretto, an adjunct to their 2019 special exhibit Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice